I find that Dewey presents interesting, still contemporary ideas. The one I find most interesting is that art is innate and prefigured in our very nature and that animals do not create "art" in the same way that we humans do. I still think animals create in their own fashion but it is not for pure aesthetic purpose. Although I would say that all nature is a kind of art. Plato says it is kind of a divine art, coming from God or some supreme being.
Although, I feel that since he is speaking from a critic's perspective, he loses some of the emotional gunpowder of the artistic community. He does not present the case of art being prefigured in human beings' nature as quite so desperate as he makes his metaphors of, for example, the lightning or the mountain.
However, I do feel that John Dewey could have talked about an experience and experiencing something by using a different word or, perhaps, an analogy for the continuum of experiencing something. As I understand it, an experience happens and is complete but the continued experience of that experience can be like a memory or the invocation of such feelings associated with that experience.
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